He took the paper down from his eyes, and I saw that his face had suddenly turned scarlet. He stood blinking for a moment, and then he said:—
“I’d kind of like to hear it.”
“But that’s all there is to hear—so far!” I exclaimed, feeling somehow puzzled.
He put the verses close to his eyes once more. Then he held them out to me, and stood blinking in his odd, characteristic way. “Won’t y’u read ’em to me?” he at length managed to say. “I’ll not fool you.”
For yet one moment more I was dull, and did not understand.
“I can’t read,” he stated simply.
“Oh!” I murmured in mortification. And so I read the lines to him.
He stretched out his hand for the scribbled envelope on which I had pencilled the fragment. “May I keep that?”
“Wait till I have it finished.”
“I’d kind of like to have the start to keep.” He took it and shoved it awkwardly inside his coat. “I can’t read or write,” he said, more at his ease now the truth was out. “Nobody ever taught me nothin’.”